Study Tools

The Odyssey

Homer

Books 15–16

Books 19–20

Summary: Book 17

Telemachus leaves Odysseus at Eumaeus’s hut and heads
to his palace, where he receives a tearful welcome from Penelope
and the nurse Eurycleia. In the palace hall he meets Theoclymenus
and Piraeus. He tells Piraeus not to bring his gifts from Menelaus
to the palace; he fears that the suitors will steal them if they
kill him. When he sits down to eat with Penelope, Telemachus tells
her what little news he received of Odysseus in Pylos and Sparta,
but he doesn’t reveal that he has seen Odysseus with his own eyes
in Eumaeus’s hut. Theoclymenus then speaks up and swears that Odysseus
is in Ithaca at this very moment.

Meanwhile, Eumaeus and Odysseus set out toward town in Telemachus’s
footsteps. On the way they meet Melanthius, a base subordinate of
the suitors, who heaps scorn on Eumaeus and kicks his beggar companion.
Odysseus receives a similar welcome at the palace. The suitors give
him food with great reluctance, and Antinous goes out of his way
to insult him. When Odysseus answers insult with insult, Antinous
gives him a blow with a stool that disgusts even the other suitors.
Report of this cruelty reaches Penelope, who asks to have the beggar
brought to her so that she can question him about Odysseus. Odysseus,
however, doesn’t want the suitors to see him heading toward the
queen’s room. Eumaeus announces that he must return to his hut and
hogs, leaving Odysseus alone with Telemachus and the suitors.

Summary: Book 18

Of all that breathes and crawls across
the earth,
Our mother earth breeds nothing feebler than a
man.

Another beggar, Arnaeus (nicknamed Irus), saunters into
the palace. For a beggar, he is rather brash: he insults Odysseus
and challenges him to a boxing match. He thinks that he will make
quick work of the old man, but Athena gives Odysseus extra strength
and stature. Irus soon regrets challenging the old man and tries
to escape, but by now the suitors have taken notice and are egging
on the fight for the sake of their own entertainment. It ends quickly
as Odysseus floors Irus and stops just short of killing him.

The suitors congratulate Odysseus. One in particular,
the moderate Amphinomus, toasts him and gives him food. Odysseus,
fully aware of the bloodshed to come and overcome by pity for Amphinomus,
pulls the man aside. He predicts to Amphinomus that Odysseus will
soon be home and gives him a thinly veiled warning to abandon the
palace and return to his own land. But Amphinomus doesn’t depart,
despite being “fraught with grave forebodings,” for Athena has bound
him to death at the hands of Telemachus (18.176).

Athena now puts it into Penelope’s head to
make an appearance before her suitors. The goddess gives her extra
stature and beauty to inflame their hearts. When Penelope speaks
to the suitors, she leads them on by telling them that Odysseus
had instructed her to take a new husband if he should fail to return before
Telemachus began growing facial hair. She then tricks them, to the
silent delight of Odysseus, into bringing her gifts by claiming
that any suitor worth his salt would try to win her hand by giving
things to her instead of taking what’s rightfully hers. The suitors
shower her with presents, and, as they celebrate, Odysseus instructs
the maidservants to go to Penelope. The maidservant Melantho, Melanthius’s
sister, insults him as an inferior being and a drunk; Odysseus then
scares them off with threats. Hoping to make Odysseus even more
angry at the suitors, Athena now inspires Eurymachus to insult him.
When Odysseus responds with insults of his own, Eurymachus throws
a stool at him but misses, hitting a servant instead. Just as a
riot is about to break out, Telemachus steps in and diffuses the
situation, to the consternation of the suitors.

Analysis: Books 17–18

Homer uses minor characters of low rank to great effect
in Books 17 and 18.
Like many Homeric characters, neither the swineherd Melanthius nor
the maidservant Melantho is very developed. They are little more
than male and female versions of the same malevolent person: each
ostensibly works for Odysseus but has become a partisan of the suitors.
Despite their simplicity, they function as foils—characters whose
traits or attitudes contrast with and thereby accentuate those of
other characters. Melanthius’s disrespectful treatment of Odysseus
stands in stark contrast to Eumaeus’s unflinching loyalty to his
master. Similarly, in contrast to the devoted Eurycleia, Melantho
proves the embodiment of ingratitude toward Penelope: though Penelope
raised her like her own child, Melantho shows no concern for Penelope’s
grief. Additionally, Irus’s mingled bravado and cowardice provide
a good foil for Odysseus’s prudence and courage. Homer also uses
Irus to foreshadow the ultimate downfall of the suitors: disguised
as a beggar, Odysseus cuts down an impudent beggar, leaving little
doubt as to what he will do to the impudent nobles when he reassumes
his noble form. The foreshadowing is not lost on the suitor Amphinomus,
who walks away stony with dread.

Amphinomus provides another case study in the absolute
power of the gods. Even though Amphinomus shows some kindness toward
the seeming beggar, Odysseus pities him, and Homer singles him out
as the one moderate and thoughtful man among all of the suitors,
nothing can save him from the punishment that Athena has planned
for him. In fact, Athena doesn’t even take his benevolence into
consideration. Homer explains that “[e]ven then Athena had bound
him fast to death / at the hands of Prince Telemachus and his spear”
(18.178–179).
Just as Poseidon vents his wrath on the well-intentioned Phaeacians,
in Book 13, for treating his nemesis Odysseus
kindly, Athena condemns Amphinomus to the same fate as the most
worthless suitors of the bunch.

Homer continues to individualize the suitors, with the
seeming purpose of exposing their specific character flaws. In Book 17,
for example, he gives us the most critical depiction yet of Antinous,
who disgusts even the other suitors with his abuse of the disguised
Odysseus. Whereas other suitors at least give the beggar food, Antinous displays
nothing but contempt for the man’s apparent low breeding and physically
assails him; Penelope thus labels Antinous “the worst of all . .
. black death itself” (17.554).
Homer portrays Antinous as an ignoble noble, and Antinous’s detractors
often point out the disparity between the nobility of his birth
and the baseness of his actions (“‘Antinous, / highborn as you are
. . . / that was a mean low speech!’” [17.417–419]).

The explanation for the contempt in
which the others hold Antinous for mistreating Odysseus lies in
the feudal structure of Homeric society, which was bound together
by reciprocal obligations and responsibilities among people of different
social classes. While it would be a mistake to think that the Greeks
considered mistreatment of the poor an automatic sign of evil or
moral deficiency, we definitely get the sense that Antinous is abusing
his rank when he beats the seemingly helpless beggar. Antinous is
guilty not of pure evil but of a kind of arrogance. Accordingly,
the insults hurled at him accuse him not of straying from some moral
code but of straying from the expectations of his noble birth.